Hate spreedsheets? Excel is a powerful tool, but “Excel Fear” is a real thing.

Serial entrepreneur Nuno Job is trying to change that. His startup, Decipad — a remote company headquartered in London and New York — provides an alternative to Excel.

And today, we’ll dive in: We're launching a new series in which we talk to founders, executives, and entrepreneurs periodically on Sundays about their businesses and lessons learned.

💭 Think of them as case studies. First up: Decipad.

All this, and more, in just 4 minutes to read.

— Matthew

"Pessimism makes for good stories. Optimism makes for good portfolios.”

— Callie Cox

When Nuno Job founded Decipad in 2021, he had bold ambitions: To change the world’s relationship with numbers. 

Job, a serial entrepreneur living in London, told us this week that Excel just wasn’t cutting it. He wanted something more interactive and engaging, with a more user-friendly way of visualizing the numbers that define our world. Hence, Decipad’s motto is “making sense of numbers” to “present dynamic plans, models, and reports that engage and inspire action.”

“People love numbers, but they are disconnected from them,” Job told us. “Our product isn’t a spreadsheet; it’s an alternative to a spreadsheet.”  

This interview has been edited lightly for clarity. 

What were your early years like? Were your parents entrepreneurial like you?

I grew up in Portugal. I didn’t have much in terms of business influences. The person closest to business was my uncle, an artist who made model cars. 

But I always had a computer, and my mom worked in the only kind of computer store in town where people would buy them. This is back in the 1980s, so I had that access that almost nobody else did. 

That reminds me of Bill Gates having computer access early. For you, was entrepreneurship, making and creating things, businesses, and teams, always a goal?

I didn’t know what entrepreneurship meant when I went to university. It sounded French. But I did know that the best computer scientists were in Silicon Valley. So, I wanted to go there. 

I got hired by a Silicon Valley company and moved to Mountain View, California. 

How and when did the idea for Decipad come to you?

This isn’t my first company. I’ve always believed in helping people be good in their craft, to help them build businesses and make better decisions. 

At one point, I was creating a financial model for a company to project forward, and I remember this feeling of dissatisfaction with Excel. I just felt it was a very blunt, old tool. I couldn’t believe nobody had invented something new as an alternative. At the time, I was studying a lot of machine learning, and eventually the idea formed.  

How is your product different from Excel?

Excel doesn’t have live data. And if you want to write a paragraph explaining what you want to say, you have to put a yellow triangle in the top right corner of the cell. You have to drag these inconsistent formulas. 

As a developer, I thought we needed something better. If Excel were a language, it’d probably be the world's third most spoken after English and Mandarin. So there’s a big market and opportunity. We want to democratize access to knowledge.

What lessons have helped you build the company?

My dad is a teacher (and continues to be), and if I didn’t pass an exam, he’d say, well, did you learn anything new? And I’d say, yes, I actually read the book, I learned. The teacher was just looking for something else. 

And he’d say, well, you did well, buddy. So, my dad always taught me to set your own standards. Compete with yourself, not anyone else. Rate yourself. 

In school, it’s often about being tested vs. others and being rated, which is bad in most disciplines.

When you meet with investors, what do you tell them? How have you found fundraising success?

They ask me what success looks like for a Decipad. I have told them success is when a kid in Bangladesh builds something, sells it on our platform, and buys a house for his parents who raised him out of poverty. That’s success. 

Then they’ll ask me, are you ambitious? I’ll tell them I won’t stop until I buy Google and Microsoft. That’s my way of thinking. I think big. 

I started at IBM working on deals, but I wanted to build something impactful to help people make decisions and live their lives. 

How so?

Now, our world is basically run by algorithms. Are you an influencer? A YouTuber? So our society is disconnected. People just want soundbites. We want to change that and empower people with numbers. 

Funding-wise, where do you stand? You raised $5 million in 2021. 

We raised that. We’re in private conversations about raising more. 

When you talk to investors, are there any other lessons you’ve learned for raising money?

I don’t want to give blanket advice because it depends on the situation, the market, etc. 

The first time I was raising money, the investment dried up completely. So, I had to bootstrap. 

Then, in 2021, I was raising money for Decipad during a bull market. Everyone and their aunt wanted to give me money. 

Now, investors are very selective. It’s hard to even be considered for funding. Investors want proof that things are growing, and it’s increasingly difficult in series A. I think that the market has shrunk significantly. Because of interest rates, it’s been hard for Series B, too. 

So, if you’re building the next Excel, hire the smartest people. Get capitalized properly. But if you’re building a health app, maybe you should bootstrap now and wait for better economic terms. 

Final thoughts?

For us, it's to go big or go home. Let’s find the best people to work with and see what happens. 

Dive deeper

See Decipad in action for yourself here and read more from Nuno Job here.

WHAT ELSE WE’RE INTO

📺 WATCH: On accepting ‘initial agitation’ when starting new projects

🎧 LISTEN: Celebrating Charlie Munger with Mohnish Pabrai, Tom Gayner, Joel Greenblatt, Chris Davis, and William Green

📖 READ: Reasons why we shouldn’t focus on just raw talent

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